Today I started out by cutting & removing some excess glass at the bottom of the instrument panel.

I then sanded all of the interior fuselage including sidewalls, front seat, back of instrument panel, floor pan, and front of rear seat.  I also knife scraped and sanded the inside, top and immediate exterior of the upper longerons.

I sanded smooth a micro repair on the rear seat pan [You may have noticed, and I failed to mention, that when I started cutting the channel for the brake lines I cut through to the inside of the rear seat pan about an inch long.  The reason why is because the left side of the seat pan has a smaller side shelf than does the right, and I was remiss in not taking this measurement into account and was using the measurement for the left side shelf.  You can see the errant cut in the second pic below].

I decided since I was going to have some type of removable hell hole cover (Yes, let the debate over that rage on as well!) that I would clean up & shape the very back edge of the fuselage bottom.  This would also allow me to secure the first few inches of the brake lines.

So I devised a plan, and cut a triangular wedge of blue foam to build a mini ramp on the back of the fuselage bottom foam, right where it meets the bottom aft part of the rear seat.  I of course turned the fuselage back upside down to work on this.

I micro’d in the foam wedge & all the foam surfaces and laid up 2-plies of BID over the entire lower aft fuselage and aft rear seat junction.  I also covered the brake lines with dry micro and the BID plies.  To ensure it stayed in place I used some duct tape and peel plied it as well.

Today was all about cleaning up the fuselage.  Since I cut F22 to the original specs, and the fuselage bottom foam changed in thickness from the original 1.6″ to the currently supplied 1.75″, I have an overhang of 0.15″ (1/8″+) of foam dropping below the edge of the bottom of F22 (oops!).  I’ll deal with that later when I build the nose.  For now, I removed and cleaned up the overhanging glass from when I skinned the fuselage.

I then proceeded to give the external fuselage a light sanding to knock down whatever excess epoxy was left from the fuselage skinning.  The pictures make it look like the glass completely changes color, but most of the color change is from the fiberglass dust.

I also sanded down the landing brake areas including the leftover bondo from the “speed brake flap” construction and the interior fuselage side of the assembly.

I Dremeled away dead glass overlapping onto the firewall and knife cut & sanded in the landing gear and hellhole area.  I also removed, via Dremel, dead glass from the left lower rear seat area where it overlapped just aft of the fuselage bottom (on the hellhole side).  I then sanded the aft side of the rear seat.  I did a bit of Dremel-work in the area to knock out any dead glass as well.

Of course I didn’t sand any of the sidewall areas that would eventually get cut out for strake access.

Today was all about FINALLY getting some of the items organized in the shop.  I built a tool organizer against the back wall replete with peg board & then organized all my tools.

After my tools were organized, I went downstairs and took the gear off of the jig and removed all the peel ply from the gear.  I then tore the jig down.

Well, with the main glassing done on the gear I had to see how the gear looked mounted.  So I took the gear out to the shop and spent a fair amount of time messing about and mocking it up.

Today I planned out & ordered some RG-58 coax cable as per Jim Weir’s instructions for constructing antennas for EZs.

I also planned out some glass cuts for my Über-talented & lovely assistant, Gina, who excels in the arts of epoxy-mixing & glass-cutting.  She cut BID and UNI scraps for the main landing gear mount brackets while I worked on the wing jigs.  I cut out the #5 jig and the front sides of jigs #1-4.

Once the jigs were cut out, I mounted the 1″ x 8″ brackets on the jigs with glue & wood screws.  I drilled the two 1/4″ holes for the mounting bolts & wing-nuts but since I was using 3/4″ plywood instead of the planned  1/2″, I had to also countersink the bolt heads.

I finished sanding the main landing gear bow in preparation for glassing the last of UNI layups on the gear legs.

I set up the downstairs shop to glass the landing gear:  I cut the plastic for the UNI pre-preg set-ups and 5-min epoxied the gear to the 3 drywall screws.

I then laid up the final sets of UNI.

When all was finished, I had laid up 4 alternating layers on both the left and right sides of the gear bow, wrapping around the leading edge and coming together on the trailing edge.  Remember, each of the 4 layers of UNI alternate 30-40°, with two layers going in one direction and the other two layers going in the other direction to create a cross-hatch.

Today I glued the paper wing jig templates to the cut 3/4″ plywood wing jigs.  It took a while to find the trailing edge tip for one of the templates, but I finally found it.

After I got the paper templates glued on (I used 3M 77 spray glue) and cleared the jigs and table out of the way, I pulled out the huge Feather Lite crate that contained my foam cores and began to unpack it and inventory the foam wing cores.  As I stated a few days ago, I had been reviewing the plans since to get a decent idea of what I was looking at.  It still took some time to figure them all out.

The Prime Directive during this specific task: DON’T DAMAGE THE FOAM CORES!!!

After I inventoried all the wing core pieces, it looked as though I was NOT going to need a hotwire saw to build the wings with what I had here.  Remember, I left my hot wire saw in Virginia with my buddy Marco.

I spent about 2-1/2 hours at the wood shop on Ramstein today.  Not nearly as bad as last time… I cut 4 each Main Landing Gear Mount jigs with 5/8″ holes and tapered edges.  These will be used to temporarily “mount” the gear to the fuselage gear mounts with bondo and then also serve as the form to create the gear tabs that will eventually hold the gear to the fuselage.

I then cut out all the wing jig segments from 3/4″ plywood (the plans call for 1/2″ plywood but their’s was REALLY warped, so I went with nearly the only plywood left in Germany: 3/4″).  I then cut 17 each 1″ x 8″ connector pieces that will eventually get mounted to each segment of the jig.  In building the jigs, I’m making every attempt to get the wing jig outline to match exactly per the outline of the paper template.  To do this, I’ve taken into account the blade kerf width on each saw I use.

Back at the shop, I glued all the forward pieces of the jigs together and clamped them.

As for the landing brake, I extended the landing brake actuator hole aft by about 3/16″.  I then readjusted the topside metal mounting bracket–on the rear side of the front seat–up by 1/8″.  This locked in the landing brake door/flap opening angle to 59.6°.

And here’s a look at this guy in action!

Although there is some finishing steps that need to be completed to form the edge of the landing brake even with the fuselage, I am declaring Section VI complete!

After I finished messing about with the landing brake, I turned my attention back to the main landing gear.  I spent over an hour and half sanding and prepping it for it’s final glassing.

Today was all about the landing brake.

I had to grind out a divot immediately above the middle bolt that attaches the landing brake hinge (LB24) to the fuselage (LB23) since the bolt head was keeping the landing brake from closing all the way.  This goes back to my earlier statement that even though the bolt holes were drilled at the centerline dimension-wise of the hinge, when the hinge is angled back the way it is, it moves the bolt line up.  This was the cause behind the middle bolt hitting the landing brake.  However, a little improvisation took care of the issue.

After I got the hinge closing issue resolved, I made up a template of the electric actuator body and then mocked up the landing brake actuator.  As I was extending the actuator in and out I noticed the end of it, where it attaches to the landing brake bracket (LB18), was twisted just a bit so that all the bolt holes would not align.  That took me offline for a bit as I had to figure out how to get the bolt hole on the end of the actuator arm straight again.  I attempted to call the manufacturer but couldn’t get a hold of them.  I tried Jack, but no joy. I then looked at the exploded view in the PDF online.  As I methodically & slowly took the actuator apart, I realized that the actuator arm tip could be turned hard against a phenolic plate.  That fixed it!

I cut the actuator hole in the fuselage a little wider & longer and shaped it to the outline of the main actuator body (not just the arm) since the entire actuator had to be able to get thru the hole.

After I got the actuator hole squared away, I spent a fair amount of time mocking up the actuator angle, position and the opening/closing of the landing brake door.

After figuring out the proper location of the seat back landing brake actuator mount, I cut & drilled the holes in the front seat back.

I micro’d the holes & floxed on the mounting bracket.  I pre-pregged a 2-ply BID layup measuring 3.8″ x 8.3″ and glassed the bracket onto the rear of the front seat back.  I then peel plied it and weighed it down.

I permanentaly installed the landing brake/landing brake hinge with flox.  I bent the hinge pin as per CP 30 so it looked like a wavy piece of wire.

The flox squeezed out from under the hinge plate into the hinge itself, so I had to keep working it back and forth to to get all the excess flox out.

Also, before mounting, I constructed a 0.5 mm anodized aluminum shim for the middle hinge bolt hole area to keep the hinge straight.

I gathered up all the individual parts of the Chapter 16 and 24 consoles, arm rests & front seat ribs for some pics, as shown below:

I also grabbed a few more pics of the Chapter 8 top of the front seat back.

First off, I prepped the plastic and peel ply for the second and final round pre-preg kits for glassing the main gear.

I then spent a decent amount of time reviewing the Section VI plans to ensure I was not screwing anything up (which I’m quite adept at sometimes!  HA!)

I broke into the hardware bins to get the screws & nuts that would be used to hold the landing brake ‘door’ to the hinge and the mounting brackets (LB18) that will actually hold the landing brake door to the electric actuator arm.  Note: Even though the hinge is floxed into the landing brake, it clearly needs a little more something to hold it on, so screws are installed through the inside & outside layers of glass with the hinge lying in between the two layers of glass.

I marked the landing brake for the 4 hinge holes and the 4 holes for LB18.  I then drilled all the holes and installed the screws on the hinge and on both sides of the LB18 brackets.

I then called it a night and spent a fair amount of time reviewing the Wing Build in Chapter 19 of the plans.

Well, the first thing I did today was something on the landing brake, so if you have any good guess as to what it is you’d be right if you guessed something to do with a syringe and injecting epoxy!  When I floxed the LB19 plywood reinforcement piece into the center of the landing brake foam, with one side floxed to the outside skin, the flox apparently didn’t squeeze out as smoothly as I would have wanted.  Thus, there are veins of air running through the area between LB19 and the outer skin.  I grabbed another trusty syringe and injected a very wet flox mixture into these veins and once again ridded my apparently air enriched landing brake of a little bit of that excess air.  It looked pretty ok when I finished.

Ok, on to today’s build.  I pulled out the Main Landing Gear Bow that I received from Mike & Larry at Feather Lite (who apparently thought they would provide me an old-world European spelling of my name: “Wayde” vs the clearly Americanized version: “Wade” since I was on my way to Germany when they shipped it).   I inspected the bow for any major dings or damage, and I cleared it with a clean bill of health.  Since it looks so much like a regular bow (read: Robin Hood), I had to take a pic of it being used as such…. I know!  I’m quite the card!  Yuk-yuk…..

I took the bow out to the front of the house, threw it on my handy foldout table and commenced to sand it with my 32-grit sanding block.  It doesn’t seem like this is much of a notable event, but this was not really a “small” or “lesser” task per Se.  One line in the plans to the effect of, “Oh, yeah, just sand it a little until dull” ends up costing you almost nearly an hour and a half of your life… sanding away!  With itchy S-glass no less!  And on an unusually warm German day, and of course wearing a respirator.  No worries now though because this step is done!

I vacuumed the gear after sanding and ensured it was fiberglass dust free.  I then went to my downstairs shop and prepped it for glassing the main gear bow.  I used 3″ drywall screws & 5-min epoxy to mount the gear onto the table.

I laid up the first half of the gear layup, which has 4 alternating plies of UNI wrapped around the trailing edge of the gear and meeting close together (but not overlapping!) at the leading edge.  After this first layup is complete there will be 4 plies on each side with 2 plies in one 30-40°diagonal orientation and the other 2 plies going in the opposite 30-40°  orientation, so it merely creates a cross-hatch that grips the gear and provides it support when it flexes (kind of like sticking your fingers into those old style mesh curlers and then trying to remove your finger).  I tackled the Right side first and then the Left, using a pre-preg method of course to ensure all the excess epoxy was squeegeed out.

After I got all the glass laid up on both the Left & Right sides, I peel plied the entire gear bow since it would be nearly completely covered with the next layers of UNI in the 4-ply configuration.

Later that evening, after the initial main gear layups cured, I pulled the peel ply and razor cut any offending glass around the leading edge.

I removed the gear from its 3-screw perch and cleaned up all the peel ply boogers.